Leo DiCaprio Will Lead a Conspiracy of Fools

A deal has been 'preemptively' sealed between Warner Bros. and Leo DiCaprio for him to star in Conspiracy of Fools, based on the book by Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald about the collapse of Enron. Variety reports that the studio paid seven figures for the book option and screenplay. DiCaprio will play a new employee at Enron who slowly uncovers the fraud that led to the company's collapse in 2001. The script is being written by Sheldon Turner, who wrote The Longest Yard as well as the forthcoming Magneto, an X-Men spin-off. "Kurt made the factual stuff read like a thriller, and it felt right to tell the story from the point of view of an outsider," Variety quotes Turner as saying. "The goal was to take it away from feeling like a staid look at a corporation and turn it into a character study."

DiCaprio currently has his name on a few other projects, including a much-talked about project that would explore the early days of Theodore Roosevelt and an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum thriller, The Chancellor Manuscript. If the Conspiracy deal goes through, it would continue the successful collaboration between DiCaprio and Warner Bros. that spawned last year's smash-hit The Departed.